The Bureau of Meteorology has released its Annual Climate Statement, showing 2017 continued the trend of warmer than average temperatures across Australia, and the country received slightly above-average rainfall.

The Annual Climate Statement is the official Bureau summary of the previous year, including temperature, rainfall and significant weather.

The Bureau's head of climate Monitoring, Dr Karl Braganza, said with a national mean temperature 0.95 °C warmer than the 1961–1990 average, 2017 was Australia's third-warmest year on record.

"Despite the lack of an El Niño—which is normally associated with our hottest years—2017 was still characterised by very warm temperatures. Both day and night-time temperatures were warmer than average; particularly maximum temperatures, which were the second-warmest on record,” he said.

"Seven of Australia's ten warmest years have occurred since 2005 and Australia has experienced just one cooler than average year—2011—in the past decade.”

And it wasn't just on land that the mercury was elevated, with oceans around Australia recording temperatures well above average for the year and prolonged high sea surface temperatures being associated with significant coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef during early 2017.

Despite the heat, there were also some very cool nights in southern Australia in June and July, associated with long strings of cloudless days.

Dr Braganza noted it was a mixed year for rainfall. "The middle of the year was notably dry, with June the second-driest on record nationally, and September the driest on record for the Murray–Darling Basin.

"The last three months of 2017 took a wetter turn, with above-average rainfall in many areas,” he said.

Averaged over the whole of Australia, rainfall for 2017 was 8 per cent above the 1961–1990 average of 465.2 mm.

In 2017, Australia saw:

A neutral El Niño–Southern Oscillation for most of the year, but the tropical Pacific Ocean cooled steadily from mid-winter and La Niña was declared at the start of December